Tag: courage

  • Judging self into misery

    Judging self into misery

    When we internalise our struggle to the point of believing it to be so unique that it cannot possibly be grasped by anyone else, we give it a power of magnitude beyond the experience itself.

    Misery intensifies the more we dwell on it.

    When we live inside our heads, we convince ourselves that our struggle and our pain defines our courage because if only ‘they’ knew what we were dealing with while still showing up, they wouldn’t judge us the way that they do.

    We judge ourselves harshly long before we give the world an opportunity to judge us.

    We then take that self-judgement and treat it as a truth of what we think others think of us.

    Then we treat others based on that assumption that we made from the self-judgement while blaming them for judging us.

    Crazy, right?

    That’s what holding on to pain or misery does.

    It distorts our grasp on reality because we only find what we’re looking for, while we ignore or dismiss anything that conflicts with that.

    It’s not as confusing as it may sound.

    If you go to the grocery cupboard looking for a can of tuna, you’re not going to notice if you have enough rice left, because you weren’t looking for rice, you were looking for tuna.

    Same with life.

    What you focus on is what you’ll find, and that’s why you won’t see what others see if you’re busy judging yourself or waiting for justice, because they’re looking at your life very differently.

    That’s how we create self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships, or we create anxiety about what we need to deal with in life.

    Step back.

    Take a deep breath.

    Break the routine.

    And surround yourself with people or an environment that helps you to regain perspective beyond what is weighing you down.

    That’s how we reconnect with hope and with joy in life.

    It always starts with you.

  • The courage to own your life

    The courage to own your life

    The courage to own your life will pay dividends long after you’re gone. It’s an investment in the generations to come.

    In the same way that we look back on our predecessors or great grandparents and feel a sense of awe about their achievements, or their way of life, generations from now, someone may be doing the same about us.

    That’s why it’s important to get over our insecurities and act with purpose and conviction.

    No legacy worth leaving was ever created by focusing on what others might say.

    If nothing else, worrying about what people may say is the very root of the fear that prevents us from sharing with this world what it desperately needs.

    Authenticity.

    When we operate from a place of fear, we step into survival mode.

    We’re prone to protect what we have or what we’ve inherited, rather than growing because of it.

    That fear then makes us aggressive towards those who don’t deserve it, and it convinces us that what we have is all we’ll ever be capable of achieving.

    Courage results from believing in the value of what we are capable of creating, and pursuing it as if our life will remain incomplete without it.

    But that assumes that you haven’t already surrendered to your fears and embraced the probability of amounting to very little by the time of your death.

    Don’t wait until your final sleep arrives before realising that you prevented yourself from living.

    Your past only defines the experience and skill that you acquired to navigate your future. It doesn’t, and never will define your future.

    It always starts with you.

  • A diet of fear

    A diet of fear

    This is probably one of the most important things you could ever connect with.

    So much damage is caused by fear driven decisions. It destroys your spirit leaving you to find comfort in the very source of the fear that is destroying you.

    If you’ve been raised on a diet of fear and compliance, it is inevitable that your choices will reflect your fears, and not your dreams

    Fear destroys hope and replaces it with futility.

    In the face of futility, we resort to compliance, because compliance provides us with familiarity.

    Familiarity tethers us to rituals, traditions, and behaviours that feed the cycle that sustains the power of fear.

    That is, the cycle of compliance at all costs.

    When compliance becomes the objective, blind following becomes the method, and critical thinking is set aside in favour of inclusion.

    The need for inclusion destroys dreams, breaks hearts, and damages souls, leaving in its wake a field of martyrs who surrender their joy in the face of futility, not realising that it is fear that breeds futility, and not overwhelming odds.

    Be courageous, brave soul. Self-imposed martyrdom is not the only path to peace. In fact, it defeats that very goal.

  • Fear or hope? Choose wisely

    Fear or hope? Choose wisely

    Fear drives us towards protecting ourselves from a difficult past, while convincing us that we’re investing in a better future.

    If we were truly investing in the future, fear of the past repeating itself would not feature in our efforts towards growth and new beginnings.

    It is fear that manifests as illness or disease in our bodies, before any external threat overcomes us.

    Fear robs us of what we have in the present moment.

    When the present moment is lost, the future becomes a mirror into the past.

    The cycle of fear is perpetuated as we find evidence of the past threatening to contaminate the future…and so the spiral continues until either it breaks, or we do.

    When fear drives us, we look for, and find evidence that confirms our fears.

    When we look for evidence that invalidates the fear, we’ll find reason to forge ahead with hope and courage, recognising that harbouring hope is already confirmation of our courage to rise above the fear.

    What will you choose today?













  • Don’t let fear win

    Don’t let fear win

    If you’ve been raised on a diet of fear and compliance, it is inevitable that your choices will reflect your fears, and not your dreams

    Fear destroys hope and replaces it with futility.

    In the face of futility, we resort to compliance, because compliance provides us with familiarity.

    Familiarity tethers us to rituals, traditions, and behaviours that feed the cycle that sustains the power of fear.

    That is, the cycle of compliance at all costs.

    When compliance becomes the objective, blind following becomes the method, and critical thinking is set aside in favour of inclusion.

    The need for inclusion destroys dreams, breaks hearts, and damages souls, leaving in its wake a field of martyrs who surrender their joy in the face of futility, not realising that it is fear that breeds futility, and not overwhelming odds.

    Be courageous, brave soul. Self-imposed martyrdom is not the only path to peace. In fact, it defeats that very goal.

  • Yearning for a simple life

    Yearning for a simple life

    Life is simple, but it’s not easy.

    It becomes complicated when we look for the easy way out.

    Doing the right thing is often complicated by our concern for the consequences with those around us.

    The greater our emphasis on those consequences, the more complicated life becomes because we have that much more to consider before we hold true to our convictions.

    Often, it’s the easiest way to lose sight of our convictions, or finding reason to compromise it until it becomes an empty shell of what we once believed to be sacred.

    A simple life, by definition, would lack such complexity.

    But in that lies the demand for courage and clarity of thought.

    The clearer our thinking, the easier it is to muster up our courage.

    Courage is therefore contaminated by an unhealthy fixation on potential outcomes.

    Worse still, by preempting outcomes and changing our convictions to avoid conflict, we deny others the opportunity to grow by protecting them from the truth that we hold within us.

    Thus, life threatens to be complicated, and unfulfilled, because what we express on the outside ceases to resonate on the inside.

    And finally, this opens the door for a bitterness or regret that can no longer be expressed because we surrendered our peace for a painful compromise.

    Hold on to your truth, and allow others the space to deal with the awkwardness of their insecurities as they slowly learn to embrace a new understanding.

  • Hope and faith…two peas in a pod

    Hope and faith…two peas in a pod

    Sometimes I lose the only thing that I can’t afford to lose. Hope.

    And then I scramble after it knowing that everything else is worthless without it.

    Hope is something that cannot be denied, or destroyed.

    Like faith, it can only be redirected.

    When we give up hope in our dreams, we invest hope in the relief that we hope to feel after abandoning the struggle. Or the pursuit.

    Wherever we direct our hope, that is how our hope will serve us.

    Invest your hope with care. Not with reckless abandon.

  • Hopelessly hopeful

    In all the times that hope seemed to escape me, I realised that it was not because the future held no hope. It was because I had given up hope of being able to participate meaningfully in that future.

    I’ve often believed that it’s not depression that exists, but instead, it is hopelessness. It is the absence of hope, or the absence of our belief in hope, that gives us reason to feel deflated about the future. Yet we focus so much on the depression, that we don’t consider putting effort into restoring hope.

    It would be simple if we weren’t invested in the present moment, or the current place, or the relationships that we cherish. The world is larger than any life we could ever live, yet we willingly forego the possibility of finding joy somewhere other than where we are.

    Have we convinced ourselves that success is only relevant when shared with those that we hold significant? What if they don’t return that sentiment? Does that render us unsuccessful? Or any less valuable? Why then, do we hold on to the need to get the right response from the right person at the right time before we are willing to embrace hope?

    I often toyed with the idea of being a merchant of hope. One who sells the value of moving beyond where we are, so that we allow ourselves to be recipients of beauty from those who do not hold within them the bitterness of our past. Perhaps we stay because we court the idea of being able to guide them back to joy, and in so doing, place the hope of our joy in them finding theirs? Or convincing them to see the joy in us beyond what they’ve grown to know.

    Joy is cheap if not shared. Eventually, even uplifting others loses its sparkle if inclusion in their joy feels unreachable. It’s that feeling, that deeply seated desire to be instrumental in the joy experienced by another, but also being recognised and appreciated by them for creating such joy that perhaps, keeps us rooted to the pursuit of an outcome that may torment us in the present, but elevate us in the future.

    The hopelessness of hope lies in the truth that hope, even when deliberately abandoned, never leaves. It never abandons us, despite the intensity of our efforts to abandon it. And, I think, it is in that tenacity of hope itself, that the ego is frustrated because even in this effort towards hopelessness it finds it impossible to attain success.